


Obsession

by mtjester



Series: Insurrectionbent [15]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, M/M, Master/Slave, Slavery, Subjuggulators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtjester/pseuds/mtjester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a disarming moment of contemplation, the Grand Highblood considers Tavros's role in Gamzee's life and allows him some room to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obsession

**Author's Note:**

> Set before the events of [Insurrection for Desperate Dreamers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/629667/chapters/1138507)
> 
> The events in this story are set after the events of [Subjugation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/726915/chapters/1349172). If you followed the link at the end of Chapter 9: Shame in _Insurrection for Desperate Dreamers_ to this fic, know that this flashback link occurs before the flashback link for Subjugation, so the characters will refer to events you have not read about yet. I did this on purpose to build suspense in the main story, and whatever confusion it might cause you is also planned. You can still wait to read this until after you've read Subjugation if you prefer.

It was one of the unusual days when the Grand Highblood, falling into a lucid state, didn’t feel any violent impulses towards his pail slave.  He sat at the table in the middle of the cell, watching Tavros shift uncomfortably beneath his unaffected gaze. 

It had been a good while since the Highblood had forbidden Gamzee from visiting Tavros, but he knew the two of them were planning something.  When he first declared the ban, Gamzee’s wrathful episodes had increased substantially, but they suddenly dwindled and Gamzee adopted an intensity of purpose that gave an unknown direction to his rage.  The change hadn’t escaped the Highblood.  He was suspicious, but he knew he wasn’t going to get anything out of Gamzee about it.  Maybe that was why he felt compelled to visit his pet.  It wouldn’t be difficult to pry information out of him, but upon entering the cell he found himself without the malice necessary to commit to a proper cross-examination.  He wasn’t one to question his impulses, so he allowed himself to watch the lowblood until he felt like doing something with him.

Tavros was afraid to take his eyes off him, and not without reason.  When he fell into these moods, his capricious nature could take him in any direction without warning.  Any move could be the wrong one so long as the Highblood kept his intentions veiled, if indeed he had any intentions at all.  It was for his own safety that Tavros sat silent and still, his eyes shifting between the floor and the Grand Highblood’s unusually harmless gaze.

“Of all the mother fuckers, why you?” the Highblood finally murmured, referring to Gamzee’s affections for the lowblood.  Tavros's eyes shot to his, but he didn’t answer.  It was just as well to the Highblood.  It was a question he had asked multiple times, and he had never received a satisfactory answer.  He didn’t expect Tavros of all people to give him one now.  He narrowed his eyes, inspecting the slave’s form and mannerisms, but the mystery was clearly somewhere beneath those shallow standards.  “Come here,” he commanded.

Tavros stood and walked to him, stopping dutifully before him.  “Kneel,” the Highblood said, and he did without question.  He was always so obedient.  The Highblood reached out and snaked his fingers into his hair, which had grown long and full the way the Highblood liked it, and he tilted his head back gently to get a better look.

He of course knew what Tavros looked like and felt mostly indifferent to his appearance.  Perhaps Gamzee saw something in him that the Highblood didn’t.  It wouldn’t have been surprising. Since the Highblood had become a dreadful entity to the lowblood, he hardly ever saw any pleasant emotions on his face, and he couldn’t remember if he had even once seen him smile.  He had always seemed so weak and pathetic to the Highblood, hardly more than a malleable, simple creature who was all too easy to hurt.  Never once had he struggled, except when a shock of pain got the better of him.  His inclination towards self-preservation far outstripped his pride, and he took his punishments without complaint.  He hardly needed to be convinced that he was living a lifestyle someone of his class and ability deserved.

And yet Gamzee almost always seemed happier when he visited him in the past, like there was something about the lowblood that was worthwhile.  Even when it seemed that Gamzee had finally lost himself to the harshwhimsies the Grand Highblood had been trying to drudge up with his chucklevoodoos since his conscription, a visit with Tavros always brought him back to something resembling sanity.  It infuriated the Highblood.  What could the lowblood possibly say or do that could so totally sabotage his efforts to prime his descendent?  What could they possibly have to talk about?  Gamzee never had the same rapport with one of their own, with whom he shared many similarities and points of interest.  The heathen didn’t even adhere to their religion.  He probably didn’t know a thing about it.

“What do you know of our bitchin’ faith, pet?” he asked, messaging Tavros’s head around his horns.  He could tell it felt good, but still the lowblood didn’t relax.

“Your...religion?” he asked.  The Highblood never repeated himself to him, so he bit his lip and fumbled for an appropriate answer.  He was afraid to offend the Highblood, knowing that he was a very pious man who took his faith seriously to the point of obsession, but in his nervousness his mind drew a blank.  Finally, he said, “I know that, um, there are messiahs, who are full of mirth, and, uh, they have something to do with a sort of, um, carnival salvation, called, uh, called...the Vast Honk...and that you have this...horror clown theme, which is, uh, not meant to be taken in a, uh, humorous or entertaining way at all, like how clowns, uh, normally are... And you drink a lot of Faygo, and...use a lot of expletives...and also that you believe in miracles...”  He finished on a lame and somewhat defeated note and prepared himself for the impending wrath.

But the Highblood accepted his explanation with only a slight frown.  “Miracles,” he repeated, disappointment evident in his voice.  He sighed and gave Tavros’s horn a tug, signaling for him to climb onto his lap, which he did without hesitation.  He did not flinch as the Highblood ran his hands up his thighs to rest them on his hips.

The Highblood sat silently for a few minutes, staring at Tavros’s face with lidded eyes.  He had tried once to paint that face like a member of their cult, thinking that maybe there could be hope for the lowblood if he could come to understand their ways, but something just hadn’t clicked.  At first he had thought it was the knowledge that beneath the paint ran brown blood, which wasn’t a whimsical color, but in the end he had decided that it was just the horns.  Those gigantic, cumbersome horns threw off the whole image.  He had very nearly sawn them off, much to the distress of poor Tavros, but he had stopped himself at the last minute, deciding that they had their uses.  Now he knew that it would have been pointless anyway.  The slave did not have the capacity to understand the mirthful mysteries.  He probably didn’t have the capacity to believe in anything.  Lowbloods were notoriously impious, and he hadn’t heard of anything that could be called a religion among the lower castes.  But perhaps he was wrong.

“If it is beyond you and your heathen brethren to understand the mirthful mother fuckin’ work of our good messiahs, what blasphemous beliefs sustain you spiritually ignorant bitches?” he asked, just as Tavros’s nerves were pulling taunt to the point of snapping.  

The lowblood stared at him, confusion and distress written painfully across his face.  As far as he knew, this discussion was riddled with metaphorical land mines waiting to get stepped on.  He watched the Highblood’s face as he responded, “I believe in, uh, fairies, I guess, even though they aren’t real.”

“Fairies?”

“Yeah, um...little people with wings, who use magic and, uh...like in Pupa Pan...”

A faint bronze blush was coloring his cheeks, and the Highblood smiled.  This was a rare thing indeed, to see his pail slave blushing when there was nothing perverse happening.  He ran his hands up the man’s slight torso and slowly began to undo the buttons on his shirt.  “The false faith of the lowbloods revolves around little people with wings,” he said, repeating the fact with a faint note of mockery.

“It’s, uh...” Tavros started, but he immediately fell silent until the Highblood gestured for him to continue. “It’s not really a religion so much as, uh, just folklore, which I’ve, uh, adopted as a personal motif, in a way that could maybe be viewed as, um, religious by others, I guess...meaning it’s just something I personally believe, but not like as a creed...”

“Something you personally believe?” the Highblood repeated, pulling the shirt off his shoulders.  He let it fall to the floor.  “People with wings...perhaps you are not the mother fuckin’ fool you seem.”  With surprising relish, he untied the knots that held Tavros’s wings hidden beneath his clothing, allowing them to flutter open and stretch themselves.

When he had seen the crippled lowblood roll himself up for conscription on his wheeled device those several sweeps ago, he had immediately written him off for culling, not caring to spare him a second glance.  It hadn’t been until Gamzee dropped mention that he could commune with a variety of creatures that he had begun to pay attention.  It was then that he had made the connection.  He could hardly believe it, but the lowblood did have the right face and those horns were unmistakable.  He had almost laughed out loud to think that the Summoner, that most brave and noble lowblood who had transcended the limitations of his blood color to lead the rebellion to end all rebellions, had sired such a pathetic creature.  It was a joke.  But he loved jokes, and he had been intrigued.  So he had spared him.

It was the promise of those wings, the likes of which he had never seen again after the Summoner’s death, that had prompted him to adopt Tavros as his pail slave instead of simply sending him to the belly of the ship to work with the other hapless lowbloods.  It had disappointed him greatly to discover that the lowblood had not yet grown wings like his ancestor had.  He was still young, though, so for a sweep he waited to see if they would appear.  He had begun to think that they never would, that perhaps the Summoner benefited from a very rare genetic mutation that hadn’t been passed to his descendent.  On his less agreeable days, he felt sure he had made a mistake in assuming Tavros was the Summoner’s descendant at all, that the meek, submissive man could not possibly be at all related to the legendary warrior, and he had often come close to culling him for it, despite the lowblood's usefulness as a means of manipulating Gamzee.  But then, the day he had compelled Gamzee take the genetic material Tavros owed him, he saw marks appear, and knowing them for what they were, he had tied the lowblood down onto his belly and refused to let anyone besides himself enter the room.  He had personally taken Tavros his food and fed him, and he had even taken the trouble to stop by periodically to let him use the bathroom.  But until he was sure the wings were fully formed, he would not let Tavros move around freely.  He wanted them to be perfect, and he couldn’t trust the lowblood to appreciate that.  In the end, he wasn’t disappointed.  They were the slave’s only redeeming quality as far as the Highblood was concerned, but they were more than good enough.

He ran his hands behind Tavros to touch the base of the wings, which quivered in response.  The fragile gossamer material shone softly in the pale light of the cell, each movement catching the light in a glimmer of color that danced across the shimmering bronze surface.  They were beautiful.  Not a soul in the universe had seen them except for the Highblood, who guarded them jealously.  They were kept hidden at all times except when the Highblood let them free, and none of the slaves who took care of his needs, indeed not even Gamzee, had laid eyes on them.  They were the Highblood’s, his and his alone, until the day Gamzee killed him properly and laid his claim on the lowblood.

The word “miracle” came to the Highblood’s mind again, a word his descendent had used much too often in the early days to refer to things that were not properly miraculous.  But these wings...these were a miracle.  No other troll in the universe was so gifted.  Where in the dark carnival was there a place for this flimsy, mystical beauty, which would not survive the murdermirth of the bitching bloodcircus unless given over to a properly pious mother fucker? 

“Tell me about these mother fuckin’ fairy bitches what sustains your beliefs,” the Highblood commanded, running a finger so lightly across the surface of the wing he hardly touched it at all.  Tavros shivered as his other hand trailed down his spine and back up, slowly beginning to message the strange set of muscles that should have been used for flight but were now pulled taunt and weak from the imprisonment of the wings.  Slowly, Tavros began to talk, repeating stories and fairy tales he had memorized when he was young, and the Highblood kissed the crook of his shoulder, allowing his head to rest there while he listened so he could watch the wings flutter in the light.

**Author's Note:**

> [If you followed the link at the end of chapter 9 in IDD, click here to proceed to chapter 10.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/629667/chapters/1316717)


End file.
